I have been following the demonstrations in Iran this past week with great interest.

I was a young boy in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah and led to a decades-long cold and hard war with the West. It is my firm belief that the events in Iran in 1979 were the beginning of the War on America that resulted in the attacks of 9/11/2001.

I have stated on several occasions that the deaths on 9/11 were the result of actions & inactions of every President from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush as the dealt with the ripple effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Raise your hand if you think the Iranians would be marching now if Saddam had not been taken out in 2003 and successful elections in Iraq?

Can anyone honestly think that the Iranian people could have NOT been inspired by the overthrow of the brutal Saddam Hussein and the subsequent free and FAIR elections in Iraq? If you think not, you are delusional and living in a dream world.

No matter what the final outcome in Iran is, I am confident that the marches in the streets will represent another battlefield win by the United States against Islamic terrorism. The actions of President George W. Bush and the heroic deeds of our US military has had a significance influence on the future of Iran — whether it ends this week or in 10 years.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one that feels this way. Blogger Kirk Petersen remarks: It is a vindication of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq.

Petersen also put me onto a column by Daniel Finkelstein of The London Times who today even more forcefully connects the dots between American ideals and actions and the protests for election fairness in Iran. Read the whole thing!

For years we have been told, we neocons, that other cultures don’t want our liberty, our American freedom. Yankee go home! But it isn’t true. Because millions of Iranians do want it. Yes, they want their sovereignty, and demand respect for their nation and its great history. No, they don’t want foreign interference and manipulation. But they still insist upon their rights and their freedom. They know that liberty isn’t American or British. It is Iranian, it is human.

It is not part of their [Iran's] precious heritage that someone be charged with a capital offence for circulating a petition on women’s rights. Nor that nine-year-old girls should be eligible for the death penalty, and children hanged for their crimes. There is no special Iranian will, even given their religious conservatism, that students should be flogged in public for being flirtatious, and homosexuals hanged in the streets.

The protests for Mr Mousavi do not just expose the lie of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory. They expose the lie that there is something Western in wanting democracy and human rights.

Precisely. There is no question that the modern-day quest for liberty and freedom throughout the world that continues today had its origins on July 4, 1776 with those visionary words and yet simple theory of self-government:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Bruce, you may be right, but I’d need more evidence as in statements from protesters. And even so it’s unprovable, because you can’t go back and replay history using different variables. And I say this a confirmed neocon who supported the war in Iraq and who still does.

While I can honestly say that I have always been in awe of our founding documents, I have never cried over a quote from the Declaration until today. I guess its because of the context.

I think that God does and has spoken outside of the Bible and that some works have His Spirit in them. If any secular document can be said to be “holy”, it is the Declaration of Independence, particularly the above quote. If any words roar out in history as inspired by Truth, these words do.

Wow. Wow. How bloody lucky are we??? God bless the Iranians and I hope that they can someday soon enjoy the human right of liberty the way that we do.

(And there you have it folks, my 4th of July America-Lovin’ post weeks ahead of time…..)

A well-written post; the Iranian protesters have been on my mind all week, and in my prayers also.

I remember well, watching footage of the first (true, democratic) election day in Iraq, it was December, 2005 I think. Jubilant Iraqis with purple fingers; families reportedly walking miles to get to a poll to vote. I can still recall vividly how proud I felt, to be an American, and how fortunate!

The tree of liberty is watered by blood. That was true in America and that will be true in Iran.

Just as Reagan is responsible for the Berlin wall falling, so is GW Bush responsible for the Iranian uprising. He has injected the liberty virus.

Bush had constant refrain that he believe the desire for freedom was a human one and that liberty can be achieved in the Middle East countries. Iraq is still in the crucible but it has encouraged other countries.

Bush is wildly popular in Ukraine, Georgia , Serbia, Moldavia and other countries that have recently acheived greater freedom.

If Iran acheives the revolt then I expect the same will be in Iran. They will remember the people who spoke of freedom for them. Obama will not fare so well with his equivalence speeches. They are not inspiring for freedom.

If you want to bring up history, then you should go back to 1953, not just 1979 in Iran. At that time, Iran had an elected, sovereign government. Dagnabbit, however, they just didn’t want to bend the US and the British oil demands. So, the CIA overthrew the government and installed the Shah as dictator for the next 26 years and played nice with US during that time.

Have you noticed that in some (but not all) places where there’s been hated for the US, it’s stemmed from the US’ interference in those countries? Look at Afghanistan: we used them as or pawns in our fight with the Russians. As much as people like to credit Reagan with this “freedom fight” it did actually start with Carter, who was advised he could turn Afghanistan into “Russia’s Vietnam”. Nice job, but then as soon it was over, the US deserted those people, left it war-torn country – so, yet another place for anti-US sentiments to grow and fester. Perhaps if we had offered them proper aid to rebuild, the Taliban/Al Queda wouldnt have been a such a fertile ground in which to grow.

It’s not surprising that the time was ripe for a revolution in 79 nor was it so anti-US.
A full theocracy is certainly not better than a dictatorship (full and absolute rule resting in one person). So, as the protests over the elections in Iran now possibly bloom into full revolution, will it run its own course with the people there? Will we and other countries offer some kind of support or will it go further and we end back where it all started in 1953?

PS – Not to mention the material support we gave to Saddam Huessin in the 80s under Reagan in their war against Iran, and of course we know how that little bit help ended up…

iranians deserve all the credit for their own revolution. when neocons start dying in the streets of tehran, i’ll tip my hat to them. at the point, any attempt to take credit away from the protestors seems like crass partisanship.

Ignatius, a little more digging with inform you that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy. Ahmadinejad became president because he had the right attitude towards Jews, or nuclear development, or just because the mullahs liked him better, not just because of the overthrow of Saddam.

Fun fact. If Europe had gotten out of their collective sloth and smacked Hitler when he invaded Checslovakia, WW II wouldn’t have happened. But hey, I’m sure they thought back then it was an internal matter.

Chad’s so blinded by his hatred of “neo-cons” renders him immue to reason, and to that the post is talking about Iraqis, who Chad would have preferred to be left under Saddam.

Without the freedom the United States fought for in Iraq & A-stan, the Iranians would not have turned out to vote in the mass that they did. They would have already known their fate if Saddam & the Taliban were still running amock over their own people. One don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that. They see it working to their east and west.

Thank you President Bush for fighting the enemy there and the nay sayers here. It will be worth being stuck with “THAT ONE” for 4 years if the Iranian people stick to it.

Bush said that he wanted to plant the seeds of democracy in the Middle East – he did.

Not just Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran. But also in places like Saudia Arabia. It was unthinkable of that there would be elections in Saudia Arabia. Yet, it was just a couple of years ago that they held elections there. Granted, they were local elections, of no real consequence; but elections they were.

As the saying goes – to move a mountain you start with a single stone.